Second in Peterson’s series circling the village of Duncul, Eamon’s newfound happiness is shattered by the kind of murder governments don’t want to believe happen anymore – something worse than a body has been found in its waters, and the TV crews are incoming. Read an excerpt below.

The Purified
By C.F. Peterson
Published by Scotland Street Press

Prologue 

On the hill above the village the thin figure moved in the dark, capturing light. From the shadows of the pines he could see into thirty windows. He felt safe up here, armed with a long lens. They were all in their boxes, beneath him. Some drew him in more than others. Mhairi Macintosh in her bedroom, for one. But there was not only that. There was Freda Macrae, an old woman, sitting an armchair in front of a television, with her eyes closed, slowly dying. Tom Blackett, in high-waisted trousers tight around his belly, watching soup boil. The Camerons; the mother with dark hair and a sphinx smile, playing board games and drawing with her children; the father in his shed, spinning bowls and candlesticks from his lathe. There was a Macdonald child on his stomach in a bare room in Tarr Bow, eyes inches from an iPad. All there, all safe, all his. Apart from the ones at the manse. They did not make sense. They were flies in the ointment. They were men that were not men. They had no routine, and would not stay in their box. They were strangers, and they crept about, by day and night, stealing things. He had to get closer, into the trees behind the manse, to see through their window. Tonight he was going down there to watch, knowing he would see things that should not be. He was going to catch their light, and put it in a box.  

Malky had been hearing stories about ‘The Chosen One’ for months and was prepared to be disappointed. When she took the bag of his head he saw that she was just a girl, as he had heard. She had a flat face and a turned-up nose and her blonde hair was matted into dreadlocks. The lips were slightly parted and the face thoughtful. She was wearing jeans and scruffy trainers and a baggy jumper with over-long arms that hid the shape of breasts and thighs. She wasn’t making any attempt at beauty, but something was shining from somewhere inside, brighter than the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The four young men with scarves over their faces who had tied him to the chair loomed behind her. She gestured to the tallest and he handed her a bolt-cutter. This was what she was known for; getting to the point. Her accent was a strange mixture of East London and German. 

‘If you really believe in something, you are prepared to die for it. These will help you decide if you are for us or them.’  

‘False dichotomy,’ said Malky in the accent of a lowland Scot. ‘I’m not for them or you. Maybe what I choose is just to keep things hidden.’  

‘I do not believe you. We have your map.’  

‘Maybe what I choose is silence.’  

‘That is not likely,’ she said. He smiled, but she did not.  

She moved behind him and he felt the cold of the cutter on his hands. He clenched his fists, but two men held his arms while a third stretched out one of the fingers. He felt the jaws tighten on the bone. He swallowed as she squeezed the handles with her girl-strength, which was enough. The wave of pain had the familiar effect of clearing his head. He breathed fast through the nose and bit blood from his lip, trying to stop the explosion from his lungs, but could not stop himself howling at the bare bulb. No, there was nothing disappointing about Brigitta Neilsen, he thought, as the darkness returned. 

Chapter 1 

It was the end of a hot June day in the Highlands and after a long and timid approach a soft, half-night had settled upon the hills and forests that surround the village of Duncul. Among the handful of streets and lanes the not-quite darkness skirmished with street-lights, warmth-filled windows and the cold flames of televisions, but recovered itself about the lawns of Duncul Castle at the edge of the village and beneath the avenue of beech and elm that lined the drive, raising strength for an assault upon the one light high up in the ancient sentinel, and upon the dim lamp that glowed outside a small cabin in the Ash Woods to the south. Beyond the door beneath the lamp Eamon Ansgar was looking at the broad back of his gardener, Mike Mack, who sat hunched before a potbellied stove. Eamon’s phone buzzed.  

‘The police are up at the manse,’ said Rona. ‘I thought you might want to know.’  

‘Thanks. I’ll be back soon,’ said Eamon. ‘Something up at the manse,’ he said to Mike. ‘Probably something to do with those boys. You were up there yourself lately. What’s the story?’  

‘A hollowed out sycamore at the back. Could fall on the house,’ Mike said to the stove. He seemed more taciturn than usual, if that was possible. At one point during the evening he had seemed on the verge of weeping.  

‘You don’t have to live here,’ said Eamon, looking around the one-room wooden hut that his gardener had built. He took in the smell of woodsmoke, the neat bed, the sagging armchair, the store of firewood, the gardening tools in the corner. It was a real man-cave. Perhaps that is why I like it, he thought. Like his brother Stevie’s caravan in the quarry on the other side of the village, it had become a refuge from the castle, which had become the domain of women and a child; Kirsty the housekeeper, his wife, her mother, and his infant son. He was being ousted by a six month old; the heir already taking over. ‘There’s a house in the village, a proper house, that you can have.’  

‘This suits me,’ said Mike.  

‘How is Finlay?’ said Eamon, getting round to the subject he had been avoiding for an hour. Finlay Mack, Mike’s brother, had been taken to the mental hospital in Aberdeen for the second time in a year.  

‘Not good,’ said Mike. Eamon waited but knew he would not say anything more. Mike Mack had never spoken much for the forty years he had known him. He needed companionship right now, but it would not come from conversation; it would come from silent, hard work. The way forward was not into the subject, but around and alongside it. He reminded himself to concentrate on the practical, the details of doing things.  

‘I’ve got to go. But tomorrow we can start chopping that beech. Is the chainsaw sharp?’  

‘Aye.’  

‘Have you put a new handle on the axe?’  

Mike nodded.  

Eamon walked back to the castle through last year’s crisp-dry beech leaves, entering the gardens by the door in the south wall and crossing the yellow lawn to the tower door. Perhaps Mike was still annoyed about not being allowed to water the lawn. They had plenty of water from the castle’s private supply, but after thirty days without rain the village had been warned of imminent mains rationing, and it didn’t seem fair to water a full acre. ‘Let it burn,’ Eamon had said. 

The Purified by C.L. Peterson is published by Scotland Street Press, price £9.99